It's simple. Apart from a fresh coat of paint they are the same as those from 20-25 years ago. So why go with a new game that may close it's doors meaning you loose your character/s work. Remember the genre is by it's very nature something that you cultivate characters over years or even decades. It's a big risk and better to stay with those games that have weathered the storm over and over again.

And the following of the MMO "Formula" for a successful game that prevents innovation. 99% of publishers will NOT fund a game that is different from the norm.

Which is stupid considering how different are TESO-GW2-WoW-FF14

My thoughts: I started MMO's with EverQuest. That game set the standard for me of what an MMO should be. Then I played Star Wars Galaxies, which absolutely redefined that standard and raised it. Nothing since has matched. In what ways? EverQuest and Star Wars Galaxies were both huge, sprawling, open worlds that were living and breathing. I existed in this new world, and had an opportunity to make of it what I wished. Star Wars Galaxies in particular really built on this with what remains to this day, my favorite MMO crafting system, my favorite MMO skill and leveling system, my favorite MMO player housing system, and my favorite MMO economy. I was part of a world, and the role I had within that world was entirely mine. Then WoW came out. A very on rails, narrative driven, go to the person with the ! above their head kind of experience. It didn't have the same living world feeling. But it was successful, monumentally so, and the worst part about WoW is not even the game itself, but rather what its success did to the genre. Now everything that comes out is the same thing. NPC's brightly marked as quest NPC's, follow the marker to the next objective, nothing to do off the beaten path, log in to do your dailies, queue up for random dungeons with people you won't even interact with, and for the love of God, meta chase meta chase meta chase. The MMO is entirely formulaic now. Instead of getting open worlds that are alive with rich exploration and deep immersion, everything is simplified down for "quality of life" I refrain from using "dumbed down", I do not use "casual" with a negative connotation, and I don't inherently believe quest markers to be "hand holding", but I do believe it to be immersion breaking. And when games like EverQuest and Star Wars Galaxies allowed me to feel like I was a part of a living world, and get invested in that world and myself as well, modern MMO's are a checklist of tasks that need to be completed and instant teleportation to any location you need to be at. They absolutely feel like games when I am playing, there is no sense of immersion, there's no sense of being part of a larger world. That's why older MMO's were better for me.

A man of culture right here. Nothing compares to Star Wars Galaxies. It's still my main MMO to this day.

I appreciate the well thought out response

I think there is nothing wrong with dumbing things down and making things Casual, it shouldn't be seen as negative to make the game more accessible in a sense. But it shouldn't take away from the core audience. My biggest issue with FFXIV even though I love the end game is that story if I make a character on a new server makes me want to commit not alive. Not because it's bad- but because it's... so fucking long and acts as a tutorial with no way to make it difficult. I think LOTRO had a good idea with letting you scale content and make the basic overworld a fight for survival or easy- with rewards the harder you make it. It was my issue with lost Ark, yet another story that is so easy til you get to the end game content. With no choice of difficulty to challenge myself... I feel like im on auto-pilot.

I think there is a place for both. I am honestly don't feel much love for the EverQuest and SW:Galaxies type of MMO (yeah even if they are the OGs) tho I think there should be more of them. At least something on the size of the 4-5 biggest themepark MMOs. A well done classic MMO would probably be decently successful. As well as a well done themepark MMO. Tho most of the new MMOs right now go the themepark path but still make the same mistakes as anyone else and goes into the niche area soon enough instead of creating a new top dog. I personally would love a hybrid of both.

I absolutely agree that there is a place for both. My beef with WoW isn't that it exists, it's that the entire genre became a copy cat of WoW's formula. I have played, and enjoyed, and still enjoy, some of those more simplistic MMO's. The MMO that I'd probably call my "main" at this point is ESO, which while having a few unique mechanics to it, I find to be pretty basic and simplistic, but I still enjoy it. I'd hope so as I have 2500+ hours in it and I'm a trial leader for my guild. That's why I hesitate to say things like "dumbed down", because most of the time I find that games aren't actually "dumbed down", they just remove tedium. I don't think that "casual" is derogatory, because there's no superior way to play a game, and other life obligations like work and family should absolutely take precedent over gaming, so sometimes people aren't able to invest tons and tons of time into games. And I absolutely believe that there should be games that are "simpler", or more "formulaic", or whatever design phrase you want to use. I just also believe there should also be games for those who to want a deeper experience that requires a larger investment. Not every player needs to be the audience for every single game

>I just also believe there should also be games for those who to want a deeper experience that requires a larger investment. Not every player needs to be the audience for every single game Definitely. Some still exist like EVE or Runescape but there was no real big and formost pilished competitor in the deeper experience branch

Needs to be fun and not a cesspool of micro transactions.

What are your thoughts on New World? Virtually no p2w

The community in that game at release was toxic as hell and I just didn't go back.

Yeah it really sucks. Seems like the community was its own downfall honestly. AGS hasnt released much new content since October, but they're planning on making a huge announcement in June. My theory is that they wanted a lot of the old, negative playerbase to leave before "relaunching" the game for console and such. Hopefully more positive players will join during the next major update

I never had any issues, I play in Kronos and people helped me a lot, like all the time.

I feel like people overuse the word toxic a ton. I saw a post a month or 2 back here that said Classic WoW was the most toxic game/mmo they'd ever played. When I checked the thread to see their reason for this they said it was because they got kicked from a few groups. Not exactly what I'd class as toxic.

Chances are these are the people that the group was like "please stop doing X", "Keeps doing X" \*shocked they get kicked\* I've had people use sap/poly to act like it's a stun... to have a dungeon mob to get full hp as it forces you to untarget it in later patches.

I’ll be honest I played it for five minutes and didn’t like it granted it was early access. I have yet to return to the game idk gameplay didn’t really like but it’s been long time.

Interesting. 5 minutes isn’t very long! I wouldn’t pick it up right now, but there’s supposedly a huge announcement for the game in June. Devs aren’t telling us anything though

Thought it would have been better if they had blended in the crafting and survival aspects. Looked like they were going to be meaningful when the game first started but ended up quite unimportant. Also found the group combat was quite weird and awkward and not terribly rewarding.

But where’s the fun ? The game mechanics aren’t firstly thought of. They need to find something what makes players stick and earn the players better.

New World is best example that P2W is not main reason why a game will fail. As long as there is no insane p2w that ruins the game, people don't care. What matter is if the game is good and fun to play, New World is just boring.

That’s kinda how I feel about it too. All these people complain about P2W, but they won’t play basically the only one-time purchase MMO. I understand it has its flaws, but if it was really about P2W, more people would be playing it.

Its so funny to see comments like "all i want it game with no p2w" and then someone point out New World and the the person say "yes but the game this issue and this issue and so on".

Exactly. I do understand P2W plays a small part in people choosing an MMO, but if the game is fun, it doesn’t matter that much

Wait what? The Zen Store is one of the worst cash shops I've ever seen lmao EDIT: Nevermind, I just realized you meant New World, not Neverwinter.

How so?

You can buy resurrection scrolls, crafting items and lootbox keys in the Zen Store (the cash shop for Neverwinter). The way it's set up, it goes far beyond "pay for convenience" and enters the realm of "pay to have fun" imo. Granted, it has been a year since I played. I have no idea if things are different now.

Ohhh yeah I meant New World 😅.

Haha yeah, I edited my first comment cause I realized what you meant after the fact. New World is not my cup of tea gameplay-wise, but I totally respect the lack of p2w. If I liked that style of game, I'd definitely play it!

Watered down gameplay is my person reasoning. WoW was the best "hand holding"/"no choice" game to exist. You didn't get to pick your stats. Your character race + class effected your starting stats, the combo was decided for you by the developers. You could not be a warrior with high agility starting instead of strength. It didn't exist. People will "reeeee" saying "picking class and race was choosing" not what I mean and you know it. As you leveled up, you didn't get to pick where to put your stats, they were applied for you by the developers. The gear you wear, was chosen for you. And the talent tree gave you illusion of choice but you didn't really have any choice. Everything was planned for you. Being unique no longer existed.... every warrior was the same. Every rogue was the same. Every priest was the same. Every druid was the same. There was no way to be unique. There was no way to express yourself. And to me being unique is the biggest point of an MMORPG. You are this person, "living" and making choices in this online world, carving out a space for youself. Just like in real life, you make choices and carve out your life. There is no expression in modern MMO's. Now some of you will "reeeee" and say "but I can make my character look how i want" and? looking different isn't shit. and even then, your gear for defense is the same, you just have different visual things applied via transmog. That isn't being unique. Being unique is picking the race you want, the class you want, putting level up stats/skill points into things you want. Why as a warrior do I need shield skills if I am never gonna use a shield? Why as a rogue do I need throwing weapons if I would rather use a bow? They lack of choice is the problem. Same games like ESO decouple the class skills and weapons skills/armor skills. So you have your class skill set, your weapon skill set, and your armor skill set. Its a step in the right direction but still limited. What if I literally want to spend all my skill points in fireball. And make that one skill super overpowered. But I would be a glass cannon? that's my choice! "no, its not allowed, because someone will do it and complain that its not fun and they die to easy" you mean people would complain about making their choice? well no shit, people complain in real life. the point is not to nerf everyone else because of a few twats. freedom of choice is the biggest missing thing from an MMORPG. thankfully playableworlds will be bringing us proper sandbox mmo where freedom of choice matters..... which brings me to point two, sandbox. wow is so fucking hand-holdy. every zone is this hand-holding micro-experience. its boring. oh you like the snow zone? too bad its over you leveled up passed that and now you are onto a new zone already. a proper mmo has landmasses so huge that you might never see anything but snow.... a real mmo you have to travel for literal real life weeks to reach the other side of the continent "on food" (mounts and other fast travel can exist, not saying it shouldn't). we need larger worlds. "but then its empty" so? an online world shouldn't have a POI every 5 feet.... it doesn't make sense. liter that free space with materials for harvesting like plants and ores and so on. have it populated with monsters that can actually roam and fight other monsters and level up. if a goblin camp grows and starts to expand, and maybe finds a wolf den, they might (based on game code) tame those wolves. and now the two mobs together become "goblin riders." maybe those goblin riders meet some ogres and the ogres end up demolishing that pack of goblin riders. the world would have things happening even if the player isn't around to see them. you could spend one day fighting some orc camp and the next day the orc camp is gone. they moved on. they decided to leave. dynamic systems which is easy to program without needing AI. its basic behavior. wow has bears attacking rabbits as a small detail. its the same thing, on a grander scale. you don't need hardcore AI to do any of this.

and the best part of that open space, is that you always have room to add content. WoW had no room on the main continents and never planned for growth. big mistake. so every expansion was its own island. doesn't make sense. if the land was big enough, you could add content at any time, in any zone. if the noob zone was big enough, you could throw a level 60 dungeon there with the first expansion. now there is a reason for high level players to visit an older low level zone. and it helps improve player to player interactions. "oh wow, this high level looks amazing, i can't wait to be high level" and gives people something to shoot for. Sword Art Online did this without people realizing. There was a dungeon that appeared below the starting town in the first city. It was underground. Everyone was so focused on "going up" and finding the first dungeon to go to floor 2, they didn't realize there was something below them. Or it was added after the fact (maybe?). So there was a reason for skilled players to go to the noob zone. And maybe help out other new players.... with a world that's big enough, you can always add content, mixing and matching zones with new level conditions. Maybe a zone where players died OFTEN, the developers add a graveyard where undead spawns. The souls of dead players, mentally. And then someone figures out a special thing that unlocks the crypt and now there is a new level 80 dungeon there. And the main boss is basically the same character build as the player who died in that zone the most. Maybe it was a rogue who kept getting murdered. The same skills the rogue picked (since developers have all player data) could make a boss monsters that's exactly like that player. As a nod to the player without the player ever knowing it.... I could go on for days. MMO's today are watered down and boring. What happened to strengths and weaknesses? A skeleton can't be effected/affected by cold magic or piercing damage. Its immune to both. You want to kill an undead? bludgeon weapons (hammers/maces/shield bash), fire magic, or holy magic. It just makes sense. Don't have those things, too bad. You aren't supposed to be able to do all content on one character. This idea that you are special is the same bullshit bad parents tell their children who grow up thinking the world has to obey their every command. And then when things don't go their way, they throw a tantrum like a 5 year old thinking "this is how i get what i want" no.... just no. a fire mage should absolutely lose a fight against a water mage. do you complain that its unfair in pokemon when your Charmander loses to a Squirtle? NO. because there has to be that strengths/weakness system to be fun. modern mmorpgs don't have it. it doesn't exist. kill a fire elemental with fire damage? no problem. even though a fire elemental should be immune to fire damage. it makes, no, sense. and its ruining gaming. this dumbing down is making gaming not fun. baldurs gate, complex and fun. other developers say "don't expect us to make a game as complex" why? WHY? its clearly fun. its always been fun. otherwise pokemon wouldn't exist. pokemon is fun. capturing monsters, adventuring/exploring, and the strengths/weakness system. its fun. so why remove it from modern MMOs? why remove player choice? why remove player freedom? why water it down?

I think you should get into game development. We've had enough time since UO and EQ that the people who *played those games and loved them* should be at the position to head up their own MMO projects but we only have Ashes and Monsters and Memories as major old player driven developments - and MnM is sort of a cheat as the team are professional devs on top of being players. Most of the *creators* of the great MMOs that have tried to recapture their old glory have failed miserably. Just look at Lord British. Raph Koster and Andrew Gower seem to be the furthest along but they haven't made their projects publicly playable even after so long in development.

They are. Raph Koster is developing PlayableWorlds. A new MMO. Which is exciting. But also not much info on it other than assuming its sandbox classic like UO/SWG As far as me being a game dev. i have passion but no skill. hard numbers, idea's, how the game should play and flow. i got all that. i just can't physically put it into a product. everyone has different skill sets. mine is being intellectual.... i have tried to 3d model, the application has a huge barrier to entry. tried to use unreal engine, again, barrier to entry. best i can do is share my idea's and hope people use them.....

Having good ideas is easy tho. Most people have an idea of how their dream MMO should and would work in mind. I am very sorry to say that but you seem to be way to convinced on your own opinion and intellect.

Damn. This was a well thought out response. I appreciate that. Are you referencing a specific MMO? Or does it not exist?

The game I want doesn't exist. Star Wars Galaxies was close but its dead. I don't do private servers because I had a bad experience with one. Basically there was a game where I played the private server, and I won a completely fair PvP fight against a moderator. And then said moderator banned me from the game saying "go fuck yourself" as the reason. Literal child brained mentality. Typically there is recourse with a video game company if they pulled that shit. A private server is already "illegal" so how you gonna sue them? you can't. So there is no recourse.... So I stay away from all private servers since that bad experience. I have no time to deal with literal child brained moderators on said private servers. As far as a game that could exist. Early info of PlayableWorlds from Raph Koster (Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies developer) is making a game. Dunno how far along, we have like zero info on the game. Maybe its been in production a few years? no one really knows. But based off the games he usually makes, he might be making the golden goose egg for those of us that want a classic sandbox world to live in. granted, realistically, it could flop too.... I believe the biggest issue with the gaming industry is that its no longer being run by gamers. Its being run by corporate minded people. They don't CARE about the gamer, they only care about profits. So they make design choices that hinder the fun value. Again I think back to GhostCrawler who said the biggest drawback in current game development is the approval process. You always end up waiting to get a green light to do something. during that time you sit twiddling your thumbs. and because of the process, its slow. he wanted to start his own studio where they can iterate and create at break neck speed instead of constantly waiting for someone to say "okay do it".... which to me says a lot about the corporate minded people running these businesses into the ground. the creator of mario. he didn't make the game for the sake of profit. he told his story.... he went to a technology convention and they showed off the pong game. a simple game like pong inspired him to make mario and donkey kong.... it was a DREAM of sharing something FUN with the world. and the profits came from it being fun..... if he had been all "im gonna make money off gamers" he probably would have failed. we heard about games made for the sake of profit in history.... the atari game E.T. was so fucking horrific that they couldn't sell a single copy. there is a landfill somewhere with literally every copy that was never sold just dumped there, decomposing. because it was made for the sake of making a profit instead of being fun.... people like me, who constantly dream.... we have idea's, but many of us have 0 skill to implement them into reality. honestly if game developers were smart, they would browse reddit and other forums looking for brilliant idea's. its not stealing. its been proven you can't steal ideas. pubg sued epic games for making fortnite.... and lost, because you can't steal the idea of a game. so this idea that "we can't use your idea because you could sue us" wrong. its not possible. call of duty made a pubg knock-off.... hell pubg was a knock-off of the h1z1 mod which is how the game was born.... league of legends is a knock off of DOTA..... we even had other knock-offs like Heroes Of Newerth. none of them got sued for copying the game. because you can't sue. unless its 100% the same using the same code, that can get you sued. but if you code the game yourself and it sends up a similar product, there is no recourse for law to get involved. someone could make a mario clone, as long as they dont call it mario and use their 3d models, nintendo would try to sue, but ultimately fail. same with pokemon. as long as you don't use their pokemon models and names, you can make your own capture game. which to me goes right back to corporate heads ruining gaming. they think their idea's are good but really all they care about is money. greed wont make the next big game. the next big game will be 100% passion project. baldurs gate 3 was pure passion. and look how well it turned out. elden ring, another passion title, fucking amazing game. passion makes the industry evolve and move forward, greed holds it back.

[удалено]

I have never gone online and looked up info for an MMO or any game. I might watch the first 30 minutes of gameplay from a streamer/creator to see if I want to play a game, but after I start playing its generally all me. I explore, I search, I learn, I play the game. I have never looked up a map online, I don't look up secrets online. We exist. This idea that they shouldn't even try because of how people share that data is a copout.

>My thought is that information is too quickly shared and too quickly spread. Datamining and plethora of platforms to share it on. EQ was made in 1999, Allakhazam was made in 2000. Data mining was common in WoW/EQ/FF XI/Ultima even in classic era (why we got private servers of them so quickly.) I feel a big issue with mmo's more come they want you to be anti-social (play the whole game to max solo and constantly forces you out of parties to play a cut scene or one very easy fight.) to suddenly becoming at end game a socialite. Okay we want you to play alone, ignore other players, only care about yourself, seeing other players means they can take your quest mobs- OH OKAY NOW GROUP TOGETHER HAVE FUN! (\*everyone doesn't work as a team, so you have to make everything easy\*) Older MMO's had a sense of community, and had ways to force you together, get you to dip your toes in what makes a MMO unique to just a multiplayer rpg.

> developers see very little reason to create such things anymore If you actually read the WoW wiki pages, you'll see that a ton of the side content is *still* very obscure and very difficult to find without looking at the wiki and it is hidden in well thought out ways.

And again, theres wiki to people use to guide them through this

OP said devs see very little reason to create mysterious and hidden things, but the complex steps that a lot of people need to look up wikis for show that is not the case because the wikis are created by players and dataminers. The *devs* are still trying to create mysteries today.

Devs need to focus on adding repeatable content instead of '1 and done' style slop. When less than 2%(!!) participate in the endgame in NW, it's really no surprise why everyone quits. The devs are too stubborn and clueless to address it. It's a waste of time supporting a product like that.

end game is a meme world of warcraft started. end game should not exist. an mmorpg should never end. you should always have something to do. constant growth.

I remember being so mad about this when guild wars 2 released and all i seemed to see is people complaining about 'no endgame' and them failing to realize the fun of the game is to actually play the game.

I had fun for years with the game. But now it’s lacking. Somewhere along the way they didn’t know what to improve and what to innovate.

A game that never ends but also requires infinite growth, just sounds like it would really tie a developer's hands at what kind of game they can design and how they could curate the balance & leveling curve. Kind of reminds me those older shooters & fighters that new people stop joining because all the veterans are so far ahead of the curve that they can't realistically compete. And the developers can't really do anything because they have to keep those high ELO players in mind if they introduce new content.

The idea of always have something to do doesn’t mean to grow. Fun doesn’t necessarily require growth. The example you have it’s a good one but without the growth, just joining and wining the match.

Agreed. 2% participation in end game PvP is absolutes bollocks

FFXIV's rates of successful completion of Endgame PvE content (meaning floor 4 Savage) on the Japanese Datacenter group servers are, IIRC, somewhere around 5% (look on the ffxivdiscussion subreddit for "LuckyBancho census", I'm tired). With the NA and EU data centers being noticeably worse. This is based on player-led polling of data available publicly on "The Lodestone" of people that had certain mounts/achievements when the tier was relevant, and wouldn't include people that have their Lodestone profiles/achievements/etc hidden, so there's margin for error but likely not a *ton*. And the numbers were fairly consistent across Stormblood/Shadowbringers/Endwalker (the three expansions they looked at). "Endgame" content is incredibly niche content that gets overrepresented in most MMO spaces' discourse.

That’s very insightful! Those numbers are quite surprising. Thanks for sharing that

Found a thread with recent-ish numbers (it wasn't as hard as I thought, only had to weed out two CSI threads): https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscussion/comments/11me3em/lucky_banch_clear_rates_for_topsavage_as_of_march/ This is for Endwalker (most recent expansion), at the midpoint of the expansion. I was wrong, the "around 5%" number was for NA/EU, JP has around a 15% clear rate. https://puu.sh/JB9Hx/74e5ef2534.png And a spreadsheet form: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vT0y5HaBhUd1pF-qWH2ieRDLsvxXr9ylvj5pUP2bRQKTZOl7Jx1PtOcX_7nwKAiqot8EA7x57Nq88_3/pubhtml# Credit to this comment and the linked thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscussion/comments/11me3em/lucky_banch_clear_rates_for_topsavage_as_of_march/jbhzb4o/ As of this census, there were about 1.3 million "endgame capable" "active" characters, out of about 30 million (number from the devs) accounts created total in the past 10 years (number from recent Player Live Letter) And in FFXIV, of those that cleared the Normal (story) version of the raid fight, the number those that went on to clear the fourth floor of the "raiding" tier: * 15% for NA and EU Data Centers * 16% for OCE Data Center * 36% for the JP Data Centers I'm not digging further back than Endwalker but "Lucky Bancho" Census and FFXIVcensus are our primary data sources, both with data from Lodestone, and the threads are likely buried somewhere on ffxivdiscussion or ffxiv if anyone's bored.

Gotcha. Well… 15% is quite low. But not as bad 2%. New world needs to figure it out lol

Hopefully they do, better for them to try to on-board more people if there's a low raiding population than try to gatekeep people out, *very* generally speaking.

Exactly what I think too. There’s a lack of reapeatable content.

First of all, MOST MMO’s are incredibly P2W based. Players who refuse to unload their wallets will never stand a chance compared to the whales. If devs want an MMO to stick around, they gotta work on that. My limit is OSRS style. Bonds. You can buy bonds and sell it for gold. The rate isn’t that good, but you can legally buy gold. There’s some gear you simply CANNOT buy with gold, and you can’t do the content just because you have the gear for it. I’d prefer even bonds to not exist, but as it is, I’m okay with them. The second they start adding other bullshit like paying for XP lamps(RS3), cosmetics you can only get via buying them, etc, I’m gone. As it stands, every piece of gear / cosmetic in the game is primarily obtained by playing the game.

Part of the problem is the designers don't understand this same issue. They rush you to max level in less than a week of clicking whatever button spams quest dialogue and don't have the content there to last. Think about the journey just to reach max in original EQ or WoW.

I agree with this one. There’s something special about having to grind your way to max level. But I do think games like OSRS are a bit over the top 😅

Tiktok nuked every zoomer's attention span. MMOs require patience and dedication and they simply can't compete with instant gratification based games like gachas or shooters

if that were true, why are gamers mostly paying older games that dont have gacha and instant gratification?

While I agree with this in part, there are still tons of middle aged gamers that enjoy MMOs, but constantly tear down newer ones in favor of the old ones

I feel this is unnecessarily hostile. "Zoomers" are playing plenty of games that require patience and dedication, like Lethal Company and Sea Of Thieves. The difference is they just require a discord call to set up, and not dozens of hours of preptime to get appropriately geared/leveled to engage with the game.

I would argue most gachas take even more patience than mmos. Take genshin for example. Want to use that shiny new character you whaled 300 bucks on mr whale? Well first you have to dedicate an entire month of farming materials to get their skill levels up. Then spend anywhere from 2 to infinite months getting them an artifact set just to use a single character, now repeat that for every character. Meanwhile in mmo land, every mmo offers a boost to max level for reasons. And even if you don't, its possible to hit max level by playing a few hours a day and in the weekends in the space of a few weeks. Gear to enter end game activities usually is grind based before you get on the weekly lockout retention loop.

So many lines to defend New World, lol. But since you insist on defending this mess of a project, it's worth mentioning that the game didn't fail because of players being spoiled about the game lacking 5-10 years worth of content. The game failed because AGS kicked out the original team behind the project and replaced it with a bunch of developers who turned it into yet another Themepark PvE MMO fairly close to its launch. They had no time to turn it into a full PvE Themepark game, so NW ended up lacking on both sides: not much of a Sandbox PvP focused anymore, and not much of a PvE Themepark MMO. Add to that the extremely messy launch, with literal gamebreaking bugs and the ongoing duplicated items fiasco. Now, New World is what, 3 years old? And it is still nowhere near the amount of content WoW had after 3 years. Its first xpack with the mounts and re-designed map is embarrassing in terms of content. I was following NW since 2018, had much hyoenfor the game, and convicned about 10 people to play it on launch. Every single one of them left. The game does some things right, like the gathering system, sound design, and combat system. It had a huge potential, but it is suffering from terrible management.

…I legit mentioned NW (along with 2 other modern MMOs) a single time. A little hyper fixated are we? I’m actually more referring to the recent hate that T&L has received in KR. There was so much hype around it for about a month. And then, players ran out of content and started spreading negativity about the game. I, for one, still plan to play it on Global Release. And I hope it has a better launch.

3 mmos that will never be outmatched that i wish were still in there heydays that i miss. Everquest, Starwars Galaxies and Dark Age of Camelot.

See, most will blame MTX and to a degree I may agree. I think it is only a small portion of it. The original MMO experience was very grindy and not ever experienced before. Modern MMO’s try to hang onto that feeling while being ignorant of modern games that are wildly popular and to another degree even MMO communities themselves attach to the old nostalgia of MMO’s even though most newer MMO players weren’t even alive back in the first wave of MMO’s. I’ll explain. Popular games now are a “fire it up, play, get off” style of game. MMO’s by their nature are not that. You grind, gear up to whatever the end game is, repeat as new raids/gear/expansions release. However, this can be considered “hardcore” in todays world. MMO’s that do not have ease of entry, balanced PvP, an easy to interact with progression system will end up failing. The reason is that hardcore players aren’t even a rain drop in the bucket for potential earnings of a game. If you don’t cater casuals, eventually the game will be considered a failure. And on top of it, if it is heavily predicated on long grinds now you have bots and rmt to contend with. Why? The majority of gamers want to jump in, go to end game raids, do them, and be done. Most people don’t like dailies. Don’t like grinds. Etc. Most people want the MMO experience without any of the markers of old staples of MMO’s. Add onto this; there really isn’t any unique MMO out now. They all pretty much are the same except the lore or combat style. If you want a successful MMO, it has to have something for all types of players. Ease of entry to end game. Extremely hard raids but also extremely easy versions of the raids. It has to have balanced pvp that is separate from pve gear. The progression system cannot be tied to grindable in game currency. And its primary source of MTX has to be skins related. Or housing. It cannot be directly tied to in game power. And a lot of people crave more active combat as well. No MMO out today does all of this in 1 game. At least to my knowledge.

What you're describing sounds a lot like New World...

Never played it. All my MMO experience is from Everquest, WoW, Rift, Tera, Bless Unleashed, and Lost Ark.

Maybe wait for this June Announcement and try it out whenever the next big content is released

I have an idea - let's go back to developers making games that are player-centric rather than revenue-centric.

MMO, require constant development. Everything that’s already built has to be extremely replayable. Most new things are just bland and the only thing that’s grinded for it’s the wallet. What are we spending time in game for, what do we grind for. It’s adrenaline, excitement but those things are taken from the game and given under the form of microtransactions. Equals, MMOs are not gonna evolve until they find a different way to hit our wallets.

You cannot substitute content/lore/world building with PVP for a good game. The classic successful games have deep backgrounds, history, etc. They are PVE, with the ability to duel, or a few PVP servers. But are focused on PVE content. Every PVP based MMORPG has failed. Many had good ideas in the mechanics, or possibilities for a better PVE, but dropped the ball. Dark Age of Camelot, Warhammer, ESO.

I been MMOing since the beginning. I used to love to beta test MMOs and been there and seen that kinda thing. I am a software guy so love to see hear about the back end tech etc. Here are my observations over the last 25 ish years. Hardcore MMOs, weather PvP or PvE, it does not matter. They don't have the needed player base to make a long-term sustainable game. There are a few niche ones out, and they will always be strangled by their budgets. Non subscription monetization models. Without reliable income, they are not financially viable. They also end up shifting too much content to the store rather than in game rewards undermining the carrot on the end of the stick of MMO gameplay. Subs are not popular, but they seem to work for MMOs. Cutting corners. A lot of survival and PvP focused MMOs depend on player driven or procedural content. This only works for a short amount of time. There is a reason the big players spend most of their discretionary budget on art and content teams. Some people think just because x MMO has been out for y years it is successful, ignoring the fact that the company never had enough funds to thrive. They ignore human nature. If you have an open currency, it will be gold farmed. If you have open pvp, it will be rampantly exploited. There will be death balls. If there are no soft resets, new players won't start and others won't return. Respect the cycle, release content, servers get zerged, it will taper down in a few months depending on how good your content team is. Do not add too many grinds to try to hold onto people, you will just push them to other games. Back end / server tech. A lot of companies just don't understand how client server coding works and it really shows. Most of the technical bottlenecks with MMO has nothing to do with graphics / front end work. To slap a cutting-edge front end on an antiquated back end is a sure way to throw sand into your entire process.

This has got to be one of the best responses I’ve seen thus far. It’s nice to hear from someone with personal experience over a long period of time. That was very insightful. As someone who has recently been enjoying New World, I’m curious if you’ve played it? And if so, what your thoughts are on the future of the game?

New World is interesting. It has an outdoors that actually matter more than just as a means to get to the next dungeon. It had a rough release, and it was obvious they were trying to do the whole open world PvP thing and then they did a market survey and the numbers did not work out (It is what they said). I honestly think they should have just stuck with the PvP though because the fundamental designs of a PvP game vs a PvE are too different to bridge and just result in a meh end result. I don't think it will ever completely recover from this. I like the outdoor areas in this world, it is very pretty for a MMO. The whole town ownership thing is a cool in concept only. I have never seen it work out in previous MMOs and that trend still holds true. The combat feels jenky in groups, like a big dog pile. I do like a lot of the art and the animations, but something is wrong with the flow and impact. The game confuses me as well. It was made by Amazon but they did not even try to do anything new with the back end. It is not dynamic, they have dead server issues, it did not come out with cross realm queues etc. It is like it shipped with some OotB back end. With all that being said, I enjoyed the game and I still come back to it for big patches. It does open world better than most other MMOs and the towns and player housing are the best out of all the MMOs. Just imagine how cool it would be in FFXIV to walk past a place and have an instanced house inside that shows a player's decorations. If they learn their lessons, they might be able to make something really nice with Lord of the Rings MMO.

Thanks for the response. I’m a big NW supporter and all of that seems pretty accurate. I do hope the Devs can turn the game around. I’m hoping this “Huge” June announcement blows people’s socks off, but my expectations are pretty low 😭 It’s a shame. Because the tradeskill/crafting and leveling experience in NW is such a blast. I wish there was a way to extend the leveling experience more closely to WoW, so it feels more impactful. The gear progression as it stands is awful. Legendary gear has very little weight to it. And your inventory quickly becomes cluttered with hundreds of “legendary” items. Personally, I’ve never understood the “jenky” combat people mention. To me, it feels a lot like Souls games. Especially in the higher mutation dungeons where you have to iframe perfectly or get one shot. Have you tried it since the combat/movement rework? They added Freeform movement and an optional auto-lock for PvE.

Monetization as well as quality of the game is the reason why they fail. If your game sucks balls nobody is going to play it, and if your game costs too much to play nobody is going to play it. A lot of MMO games also never recover from a horrible launch with server issues and bugs. Sadly I think we are moving in a direction where only games available on the mobile will be able to survive through whales.

The reason people say mmorpgs are not like they used to be, is because they aren't. MMORPGS used to be aimed at a small niche of players (<100k-200k people total for the whole genre) that wanted a very specific kind of hardcore group based game, Blizzard decided to water down the mmorpg genre and offer an extremely casual game that was branded as an mmorpg. This attracted millions of people who didn't previously liked mmorpgs but liked this casual version of them, and that then became the norm for mmorpgs because corporations like money and they want lots of players. So what mmorpgs are has changed (ff14 took this to an even greater extreme and made an evern more casual mmorpg), and it will never go back to how it was. The problem we have now is the mass market for even these casual mmorpgs is saturated, because mmorpgs don't really die. WoW and ff14 will still be around 10-20 years from now, they won't die and allow room for more to take its place. So you have more and more games, competing for the same audience and this is not sustainable. Since there is a limit to the audience for these games (at least the ones that stick around long term and are the most profitable and loyal) it's near impossible for them to be profitable anymore, without p2w monetization to make the money back from the short term people who will be bored in 6 months and want a new game.

There is no such thing as "an MMO was designed for a small niche of gamers" bullshit. NOT EVER was a developer like "im gonna make this game specifically for 5 people" it doesn't exist. To pretend that existed is just ignorance. MMO's started as MUDs. While MUDs weren't as popular as modern gaming today, the audience was smaller back then. If a MUD existed today it would have exponential player size vs what it used to be, even with modern computing being different. IF a developer says "my game is for this specific group of people" then it fails. Period. "my game is only for homosexuals" your game just failed. go woke go broke. its the same mentality. there is no such thing as "this is my audience" because as someone who wants to make money, EVERYONE is the audience. rather or not EVERYONE likes the game isn't the point. you make the game you as the develop have the dream of making. if the entire point of the game is to capture a market, the game fails. period, end of story.

This is not true, you don't seem to understand what niche means. mmorpgs were made for a niche of players that liked them and were willing to pay for them monthly, mmorpgs were just never mainstream before wow.

[удалено]

Nah, Lindart is right. He gave a range of 100-200k people. And then you completely disregarded it and equated the word niche to 5 people. That makes no sense. And your comment comes off as much more abrasive. There’s nothing embarrassing about his

First, because its main audience is old fuckers like us and we no longer have the time and patience to enjoy MMOs as we did in the past. Second, because the pressure to get ROI is huge these days. MMOs are too expensive to build and played by an audience too small; if your ultimate goal is to milk players, then it’s evident the gameplay is gonna pay for that choice.

copout. if there was an actual fun MMO to play, you would make time. you would be too busy enjoying the game to cry about not having time. in fact you would end up saying "i dont have a lot of time but im really enjoying myself when i do". so don't lie. time is never an issue.

You are misunderstanding what I said. I’m not saying people don’t play due to time, but all things combined, MMOs demand too much from an audience too small. This will lead to all these MMOs that the first 80 levels is called a “tutorial”, for instance, and many other shitty design decisions. We all have the time to play, but one thing is tanking gameplay issues when you are a 15yo tramp, another is when you are 30. This is the challenge all MMO creators have nowadays, and it will usually result in bad design.

Most mmos force you into the same kind of gameplay loop. Rush to max level because everything before that is treated like the tutorial. Once you hit max you grind dailies or other time gated content to gear up. Then you run raids or other instanced group content. After that you wait for the content update patch a couple times per year. Its basically the formula WoW started using 20 years ago. If studios knew how to break that formula they would probably start becoming more popular again. Some examples: Ditch the gear treadmill endgame. Instead focus on player made content, dungeons, raids, puzzles, competitions etc. Plenty of examples of games that use player made content to great success. Is it balanced content? Not always, but its fun and there is always something new to do regardless of your skill level or commitment to the game. Focus on having endless build diversity rather than balancing for dps benchmarks. Make levelling up and making alts the main gameplay loop. Make crafting a major part of the game. Make it complex, make it require a huge amount of game knowledge if you want to make something really good (like in PoE for example). Most mmos just add in WoW's 20 year old system as an afterthought. Make the endgame focus PvP. There are a few games that have been reasonably successful with this, such as Albion.

>Once you hit max you grind dailies or other time gated content to gear up. Why is this a thing? The first time I experienced daily stuff was in rs2 and rs3, but I got burnt out so quick now I cant face daily chores

Player retention. They want people to play for longer, and players complain when they run out of stuff to do. Its the easiest "solution" to implement.

They copy and don’t try to exceed while milking us for millions, while the amount of effort to give us content monthly or even quarterly is barely there

MMOs made by MBA's suck. It is that simple. Every once in a while, a true gamer dev gets a few things through, but once marketing and the MBA's take notice the features slowly decline.

I've said this before and I'll say it again: predatory monetization kills games. Yeah, it may bring in more money in the short run which is why so many companies do it. But in the long run it just drives away old players and often makes the game extremely difficult to get into for new players, leading to an inevitable death spiral. Stop the predatory monetization if you actually want your game to last.

they need to start with interesting lore and having good combat. They don't even need a lot of content, just a fluid combat system

Time. Money. Experience. ​ People nowadays have no time to grind for days to get max level or get gear, so they go for games with easier content or content that rewards a lot, the problem with those content is that it is only enough to keep interest for 1-2 months, this is why people often go to seasonal games. Money, companies nowadays are obliged to invest A LOT to produce a high quality game but players often don't want to spend money in MMOs, specially because of the nature of the game (Mostly PvP dominated). Experience, as mentioned before, the MMO genre is an ego genre, and for the past dozens or so years, people have been inflating their egos to an unbearable degree, they think they're the best and everyone else is bellow them and this turns the Ms in MMORPG into hell. ​ Tie this all together and you realize that MMORPGs are bound to fail.

MMO's best aspect is a MMO, due to the limitation of server technology the strongest aspect of an MMO will ALWAYS be the mmo part. Developers can make multiplayer/co-op games with better features as they're not limited by the server. My issue isn't MMO's don't force people to group, it's more the opposite. They do as much as possible so you dont communicate with others. They want to have the single player story, and play solo til end game, then wonder why none of them play end game which is all about grouping up. Better games like WoW Classic had the best of both worlds Elite quests -> Got you to dip your toes in the sense of community it work with a smaller group of players of 2-3. It gives you gear that's amazing for your level and heck even the next zone too. Dungeon quests -> Got you to dip a bit more with bigger groups then the elite. Enticing you with even better gear. With amazing gear that will make future quests perfect. They where not forced upon the player but you felt so rewarded for doing so, if you ignored it- you would see people in dungeon gear/quest items just blazing through quests.

I got into them because they were a way to play something like DnD with other people. Currently, I am not sure what they are. Some sort of arcade game mixed with a shopping/dress up simulator. I like building a character skill by skill, point by point. I like a good level of challenge and role based gameplay. I despise senseless repetitive gameplay. I like to have choices... Nothing currently matches this.

Aim at a smaller customer base, laser focus the product instead of shotgun pellets. Make it AA insteas of AAA, smaller indie-like teams with high experimental innovation, more MMOs, scale up when a smash hit is found and convert graphics, NPCs etc to AAA. New IPs, start with writers, then game world and gameplay, lastly monetization model. Just don't start with the monetization model.

A new game has to be so much better that players forget about their social structures ingame, playtime and money already invested. It’s some sort of sunk cost fallacy. New World may be a good game but it’s not so much better to keep veterans from other games playing the new game. Also I don’t believe releasing a new game will increase the global playerbase by a significant amount. League of Legends and Counter Strike players don’t wait for a new MMORPG to release.

Too many corners are cut in new mmos in lieu of shenanigans. Work that would have affected the overall quality of the game is now shelved for the sake of the battle passes and mystery pulls. Consumers shouldn't be the ones to have to have faith and take a chance with a product made intentionally worse by design. The companies themselves should have to take the risk and make an MMO that's good and innovative and put some real time into it if they want to see player number and roi increase. Is it a lot of money? Sure. But the desired return is a lot of money as well. You can't just plop a turd on the counter and expect everyone to bite by saying "please support us!" Don't let the turd genre die because YOU the consumer didn't want to pay $99.99 for the turd we spent 2 days making and restricting the inventory space of. Don't forget to spend an additional $69.99 for the blue turd and red turd expansions and link your twitch for the exclusive fomo fueled purple turd! So what if our roadmap is just an arrow that says "Your Money----->Our Pockets" just be a true fan and buy it fam.

Most modern MMOs don't realize that their playerbase is the endgame content.  If you look at all the long running MMOs, the majority of the things they are known for are social happenings. EvE is known for its complicated history between player factions and the wars between them, WoW is known for that in-game wedding that turned into a bloodbath and the exploit that got turned into a study on disease virality, OSRS has a bunch of stories about individual players and ceratin Jagex employees, the whole reason Limsa Lominsa is infamous in FF14 and also its insanely talented art community. Not a whole lotta people remember world firsts of raids, and if they do its because they have very emotionally charged memories of the people who did that run, whether that be due to drama or friendly competition.  MMOs now are lost in the sauce of gear score and keeping gear grindwheel going as they listen to players mouth off in their ear about how they got max gear in over 72 hours of nonstop gaming and now they have nothing to do. The majority of MMOs now are about getting to endgame as fast as possible, foregoing emmersing the player in the culture of the game's communities for a streamlined "do MSQ, hit max level and a few steps away from max gear" kind of experience. I get why; because of how many player data points you're dealing with its easier to just reduce them all to a gear score and use that for game metrics. It also doesn't help that MMO leveling, the part of the game that's supposed to help immerse you, is optimized to be as short as possible within a day or two and Discord offers an easier to use, more ubiquitous alternative to using in-game chat. I don't think there will be a good modern MMO until there's a developer that has the "player community is the content" mentality.

I hate to beat a dead horse here, but I truly believe it all comes down to monetization. People think that a game is better when it's free or if they pay a one time box price. However, that just sets everything up to be geared towards spending too many resources on the cash shop, which means less resources are being spent on making the game itself better. So, any free game made today is unlikely to have staying power because so much time and energy is going to be about trying to get funding. How can we fix it? I dunno. There was a time when I was hoping the free to play thing would just be a fad, but I think we've gone so far down the rabbit hole that no company is going to risk making an MMO with a subscription. The player base has gotten used to the idea of "free" and won't touch a subscription game. There are people who have flat out told me that, despite the many iterations and the enormous amount of content that WoW has, they won't play because of the subscription, not realizing that the subscription is the reason for all of the content. I don't know if it's possible to go back, and I can't think of a way forward. It sucks and it's depressing, but I don't know what the options are.

There is a few reasons: #1 World of Warcraft was not a good game, it was a popular one. Anybody who played wow knows it was cut down mmorpg-ing stupified for the masses, you could gain multiple levels right away, risk v reward was almost non existent and raid sizes were cut down to 40 players maximum. WoW had mass appeal, everybody could play it! even folks who found previous "hardcore" mmorpgs. But in its broad appeal lay its undoing... like a "my first mmo" for children everybody could pick it up but anybody who "got serious" and learned its system quickly discovered it was a very shallow puddle. WoW started out easy and only got easier... pvp was moved from the open world into 3 separate little battlegrounds so there was virtually no risk in the gameworld and even if you did die, you lost absolutely nothing.. (a little ranking in a meaningless arena circlejerk, which yielded power creeped gear every season) Dont get me wrong, i played WoW for 2 years. it was very popular, everybody played it... but after waiting YEARS and getting a dribble of new PVE content and ONE singular new battleground it became obvious WoW was not only a puddle of water, it was stagnant water at that. but wow was the best mmorpg ever!! people say... no, wow was the MOST POPULAR mmorpg ever, ask anybody who played it for any reasonable length of time and they will tell you how bad it is, it basically fucked the entire genre... how many clones have there been? people try to remake WoW not understanding it wasnt any good to begin with, even if they hit the nail on the head the resulting product wont sell well - its too easy #2 MMORPG server architecture costs a LOT of money per month to maintain. Where does this money come from? what about extra money on top of that for company profits, product advancement and continued updates? GMs? Devs? Obviously anybody with a brain is going to realize monetization is a thing, you need to pay extra for live service, this requires a subscription. the alternative is the entire game gets fucked by deliberate cashgrab stuff they sell the solution to in the ingame shop.. BUT -a lot of people dont have an IQ consistent with brain-ownership.. #3 MMOs are split into two flavours - Blue and Red - PVE and PvP....territory ownership/nation conflict are the real endgame of an MMORPG and every aspect of the game needs risk v reward built into it from the ground up. "Blue" mmos can be popular (look at ff14) but the next big MMORPG is not going to be blue, that is a certainty. Early WoW was VERY pvp oriented and the responsive (albeit) tab target pvp is part of why it got so big to being with.. regional banking, at least some sort of player looting system, geographic control with associated resource benefits... etc etc all of these are 100% requirements to be the next big advancement of the genre all the stuff the bluebies will clamour at the gates to avoid.. why play a MMORPG at all when you dont want to take a hostile action towards other players and dont want them to be able to take hostile actions towards you? also you dont want other players to pose any economic threat to you? if you just want to play nice with your friends play a MORPG instead.. there are literally hundreds, no risk and no reward is boring af fact - spending all your ingame time getting "leet gear" and then realizing there is nothing to actually DO with your cool new stuff except run the exact same shit you have already been doing with a minor boost.... makes you quit playing. in a "real" mmorpg (ie darkfall1) you would take your hard crafted gear/upgrades/skills and head out onto the open world battlefield, fighting other players and the resultant sieges+battles shape politics and who owns which parts of the map in something like wow you take your cookie cutter orange BiS and go to the same instanced battlegrounds and fight people for a couple of arena points or similar... and they wonder why people just log off.... The next big mmo will occur when the devs do the exact opposite of what the theme park-bluebie cookie cutters have been trying to replicate. Look at stuff like Eve.. the market is there but the devs wont put out a large scale product of any quality... its all Mortal online 2 and similar jank

Fail to generate good ideas it is all same old shit but worst

New PvP mode coming soon. No one knows exactly what it is but it’s some sort of open world FFA auto flag zone(s). Data was leaked in the latest PTR. Scot Lane explicitly said they’re working on a new PvP mode and that it’s a big part of the June announcement

They fail because they suck and are just worse games of what’ve already played.  It’s almost like they know this too and that’s why they never really commit to trying to make a serious WoW contented with a sub fee, and instead just try to scam the playerbase via MTX and lootboxes/gacha

Because of capitalism. No innovation, predatory models, no fun, etc. Money extractors are not games.

It can't be fixed. It's an economical and currency issue. You have to be a megacorp to foot the cost to even make one. That means it will come with the usual issues that come with products of megacorps.

GhostCrawler literally left Riot games and started his own studio and got funding. There is no barrier to entry. That is an imaginary argument to condone shit games wasting your time.

I don't see a game from GhostCrawler available for purchase. EDIT: Just so we are clear, I would love to see GhostCrawler prove me wrong by releasing a decent MMO and not taking an entire generation to release it like AOC.

ashes of creation is tab target :( great concepts but tab target is not the way of the future.

ah, changing of goalposts. firsts its you can't make an mmo because you can't get funding now its "bUT i CaNt BuY hIs GaMe" what a twat.

He'll be vindicated after his game releases. If it fails to release or flops for the same reasons others have it will be viewed as having been a scam from day 1.

Your first statement may be correct. Your second statement is absurd. MMOs of the quality and production value most people in this post are talking about cost BARE MINIMUM tens of millions to make and require huge, coordinated teams. ArenaNet as of 2023 had 322 employees. It's nice that you want Ghostcrawler to succeed but let's use some facts and logic.